Council may consider hiring attorney
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » A special City Council meeting has been scheduled for Monday at noon.
The meeting is “in regards to hiring an election law attorney to defend the city’s right to have all proper absentee ballots counted and defending the city’s voters in any potential court proceedings,” according to the city’s website.
Commissioner of Accounts John Franck said he called the meeting for Monday — the day before the Saratoga County Board of Elections will begin counting absentee ballots — to ensure the city’s represented in case a group for, or against, the proposed charter has an attorney present while the ballots are being counted.
Franck said he’s concerned attorneys will show up representing SUCCESS or It’s Time Saratoga and try to keep some of the ballots from being counted.
“I just feel its important for the voters integrity that we have an attorney there to observe basically,” said Franck. “Nothing more but to observe and then report back to the City Council of the absentee ballots.”
The purpose of an attorney from the city’s perspective is observe the absentee ballots being revealed and lead the city through any potential court proceedings, he said.
“The attorney is in no way, shape or form allowed to jump in and throw a ballot out. Their job is to observe and if there are no attorneys on either side, then they really don’t have much to observe,” said Franck. “...But my gut tells me from doing this for the last 12 years that there’s going to be attorneys there.”
A proposal to change Saratoga Springs’ form of government was too close to call on Election Night.
While the proposal to change the government to a councilmanager form led by a few dozen votes, there are 560 absentee ballots left to count. According to unofficial results from the Saratoga County Board of Elections, there were 4,202 votes in favor of the plan, with 4,154 votes against.
There were 711 absentee ballots mailed out. As of Wednesday, 519 had been received. All ballots have to be postmarked by Nov. 6. Most ballots have to be received by Nov. 14; Military ballots can be received up until Nov. 20.
Beginning Nov. 14 at 10 a.m. the Saratoga County Board of Elections will begin counting the absentee ballots. The process is open to the public.
The current charter, under the commission form of government, has an elected mayor and four elected commissioners who serve as members of the city council and supervisors of specific departments.
The proposed charter calls for a council-manager form, which includes a seven-member council that solely acts in a legislative capacity, and an appointed city manager who would run the dayto-day operations of city hall. If it holds up after absentee ballots are counted, it will go into effect January 2020.